New Jersey high school students could get some much needed lessons in financial planning, thanks to a bill advanced in the New Jersey Senate last week. Under the bill, six schools would be selected for a three-year pilot program to instruct students on how handle their personal finances.

That's good news at a time when financial literacy among U.S. high school seniors is on the slide, according to a national survey. Most students lack the simple skills to balance a checkbook and do not understand the basic principles of earning, spending, saving and investing, according to JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, a nonprofit in Washington that promotes the teaching of personal finance in schools.

The percentage of students who had a basic understanding of financial matters dipped to 48.3 percent in 2008, from 52.4 percent in 2006. "In a nutshell, our research indicates that students don't know enough about personal finance," Laura Levine, executive director for the agency said in an e-mail.

That's why state education officials need to build upon this program and find a way to work financial education into the standard curriculum.

New Jersey has no statewide requirement for teaching financial planning. More than 40 states offer some sort of personal finance course in their curriculums. Yet only a handful -- New York, Kentucky, Illinois, Idaho, Georgia, Alabama and Utah -- require it to graduate, according to the National Council on Economic Education, a New York-based nonprofit. Tennessee has added a required course in personal finance for its 2009-2010 school year. And Arizona has a personal finance component as part of its economics requirement.

At a time when the country is in a economic meltdown, a course in financial literacy is just what students need. Good financial habits encouraged early in life will reap benefits later. Too bad so many of today's adults missed that lesson when they were young.